The present invention pertains to the radio receiver art and, more particularly, to improved blanker circuitry for use in a radio receiver.
Blanking circuits for use in communicaton radio receivers are well known in the art. Generally, the blanker circuits detect noise signals, introduced by the transmitting medium, which are received along with transmitted information signals. Several means for detecting the noise signal have been devised. A common method is to assume that received signals above a given level are noise. The detected noise signals are processed whereby a blanking signal is produced, which blanking signal mutes the output of the receiver for the duration of the blanking signal, thus preventing an annoying noise burst from being heard by the listener.
A problem with conventional noise blanking circuits has been that when the received information signal exceeds a threshold level the action of the noise blanker becomes very annoying. That is, a listener prefers to hear a strong information signal along with noise signals, rather than the distracting "holes" caused by the blanker chopping the received signal.